1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an automated inspection system for inspecting packages to verify the presence therein of a product being packaged, such as a contact lens. The automated inspection system includes a transport and ejector conveyor for ejecting any defective packages determined by the automated inspection system not to have a product therein.
More particularly, the subject invention pertains to an automated inspection system for blister packages to verify the presence therein of contact lenses prior to heat sealing of the blister packages on subsequent manufacturing lines. The automated inspection system and the transport and ejector conveyor prevent defective empty blister packages from reaching customers, and also reduce inspection costs. The system is designed to identify and reject all blister packages with missing lenses and present them to an operator for rework.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Recently, several automated systems have been developed for producing ophthalmic lenses, particularly contact lenses, and, for example, one such system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,839. These systems have achieved a very high degree of automation, and the lenses may be molded, removed from the molds, further processed and packaged all without any direct human involvement. Even with these highly automated systems, however, normally after the lenses are packaged, each package is visually inspected by a person to verify that the package contains a lens, which represents a significant cost. The cost of package inspection could be substantially reduced if the inspection were automated. In addition, although these personal inspections are highly accurate, the reliability of the package inspection could be made even more accurate by employing an automated inspection to verify the presence of lenses in packages.
Automated loading of lenses without verifying an actual transfer of a contact lens into a package base can result in more than two percent of processed packages without a lens, which is more than ten times the average rate found on one production line which uses manual loading of lenses. The present invention concerns an automated inspection vision system which detects package bases having missing lenses, greatly minimizing this error.